ISSUES OF DEVELOPMENT

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ISSUES OF DEVELOPMENT
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What follows tend to apply to most LEDCs, but
not to all.
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Access to Food

• Enough grain is produced to feed everyone more
  than 3000 calories a day.
• MEDCs dump food rather than sell it for a price
  that is too low.
• There have never been so many people suffering
  from starvation or malnutrition than now.

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Why?

• It is not being distributed effectively.

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Reasons

• The producer sells to the person that will pay
  the highest price.

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• Food aid

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Although food production per capita is
increasing in most parts of the world, it is
declining in Africa.
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Why?

• Growing population

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• Characteristics of farming

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• The impact of agricultural reforms has not been
  felt

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Characteristics of farming

• Subsistence farming (no specialization)
• Traditional farming methods (broadcasting seeds,
  wooden ploughs and animal power)
• Poor storage facilities (insect pests)
• Small divided landholdings
• Absentee landlords
• Agribusiness companies encourage commercial crops
• Smaller number of people engaged in agriculture

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Some countries have been more successful

• (Green Revolution)
• H.Y.V.s
• Irrigation schemes
• Chemical pesticides and fertilizers
• Mechanisation

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Access to Shelter

• Shortage of accommodation is one of the
  most common characteristics of cities in LEDCs
  due to
• Less taxation
• Larger proportion of income spent on food
• Few large profits available for private
  developers
• Massive rural-urban migration (shanty towns)

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Access to Health and Education
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Increased health risk

• More travel opportunities
• Overcrowding and poverty
• Poor water quality
• Lack of toilets
• Malaria (cannot afford draining swamps, rice
  fields)
• Bilharzia

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Industrialisation

• Labour-intensive, not capital-intensive
• Import substitution
• Export processing zones (EPZs) - offering tax
  holidays, low interest loans, cheap labour,
  exemption from normal import taxes and duties and
  assistance). India, Puerto Rico.
• Special Economic Zones (SEFs). China
• Tourism

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Debt

• Debt-trap (sometimes more than aid)
• Terms of trade has turned on the
• LEDCS (slower rise in price on raw
• materials than manufactured goods)

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Ecologically Sustainable Development

• Several phases of the study of development
  since World War II.

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Structural change phase (the 1940s to the 1960s)

• Rostow
• The pathway to development was seen as the route
  followed by Western Europe and North America
  during the Industrial Revolution.
• Five stages
• - traditional society - economic take-off -
  maturity - high mass consumption

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Dependency approach (1970s)

• Seeks to explain global patterns of development
• China, Vietnam, Tanzania and Cuba followed
  different strategies.
• Core-periphery model (unequal distribution of
  power - colonization, transnational companies
  encourage unprofitable raw materials)
• Growth poles (where economic and political power
  is concentrated)

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Neo-liberal counter-revolution (the 1980s)

• Free market economics
• Industries in LEDCs should compete effectively or
  close down.
• Competed to attract foreign investment to
  introduce modern technology to upgrade
  inefficient industries.

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Sustainable development (the 1990s)

• The Brundtland Report
• development which meets the needs of the present
  without compromising the ability of future
  generations to meet their own needs
• So development that increases pollution, reduces
  the resource base, reduces biodiversity or
  changes the global environment is unacceptable
  because it cannot be sustained in the long-term.

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Identifies barriers to development

• Heavy reliance on fossil fuels
• (acid rain, global warming, deforestation,
  health problems, TNCs more powerful than
  nation-states).

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• 2. Population growth
• (Development is only possible if population
  grows in a way that is in harmony with the
  changing productive capacity of the worlds
  ecosystems).

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• 3. Lack of a strong institutional framework to
  oversee the process of development, in other
  words of ecological and environmental
  decision-making).
• (Governments often argue that concern for the
  environment is a luxury enjoyed by those who are
  already wealthy).